Over one hundred people gathered at the Clocktower at Oxnard College on Sept. 28 to watch the Deaf Oxnard College Students perform traditional and personal stories with the graceful motions of American Sign Language.

Juliannna Fjeld, director of Tri-County GLAD, was a third time guest this year.

“I love to see the joy on the faces in the audience,” said Fjeld. “I give my heart to the audience and get two hearts back .”

Fjeld was one of six deaf people who performed on stage at Deaf Awareness Day. The day is designed to show the beautiful culture and language behind ASL.

Fjeld, who won an Emmy for her TV movie “Love is Never Silent,” described her exciting experience at the Emmys and what it’s like to be a deaf person for such a huge accomplishment.

The five DOCS that performed are DOCS Chairperson Catherine Russell, Armando Yela, Angela Stegman, Silvia Parales, and Jamie Adame. Parales gave her own personal story about a beach trip with her family.

“It was my first time on stage but it really touched my heart to perform,” said Parales.

The other stories performed were traditional deaf stories including “The “Honeymoon” performed by Russell, “The Deaf Tree” performed by Adame, “King Kong” performed by Stegman, and “Bird Sitting on a Telephone Wire” performed by Yela. These stories were all performed in sign language with an interpreter to translate for the audience.

“I felt like I was having a visual conversation with myself,” said Yela. “I felt like I was really there.”

During the one hour event Fljed brought two people on stage, one deaf and one hearing. She gave them a scenario to try to communicate with each other. The point was to show the hearing audience that communicating with the deaf is hard but through body language and facial expressions it can be done.

Remi Mason, an 18-year-old Oxnard College student, was one of the hearing students on stage.

“It gave me a better understanding of sign language and how it works with reading lips and body language,” said Mason.

Russell was impressed with the hearing audience and the reactions after the show.

“I thought the hearing audience learned a lot,” said Russell.